A few days ago, I wrote a blog arguing the desktop computer is irreplaceable. According to this one article I read, I may be in the very few who think so.
A study was done on 53,000 Americans from all walks of life. All across the board, Americans are abandoning wired Internet and choosing mobile only Internet in record numbers. In fact, 20% of households today are mobile only, compared to 10% in 2013. That’s double in just three short years. Households making $50,000-$75,000 a year were surveyed. About 18% of them had a mobile home. Only about 8% of households the same income went mobile only in 2013. For those making over $75,000, nearly a third of those homes are mobile only. Back in 2013, only 14% of such homes were exclusively mobile. Even for those making under $25,000 a year, the number of people trading in wired Internet for mobile service has nearly doubled. In public libraries, less people are standing in line for use of the wired desktop computer. More are coming in logging on to WiFi and using their smartphones. In fact, more of the financially challenged are using public WiFi from libraries to coffee houses to restaurants rather than pay the cost of ever increasing cable and Internet bills.
This is what happens when only a handful of companies own the whole ISP (Internet Service Provider) industry. They can charge whatever they want, and whose going to stop them? When they’re too big to fail, they’re too big to care. Plus, think about how expensive a smartphone was a few years ago. Today, prices for smartphones are so low that pretty much anyone can afford one. We can’t really say the same thing for monthly online service. But wired Internet isn’t going away, anymore than the desktop computer is going away. They will be needed for years and decades to come. But do you see even more Americans going mobile only in the years to come?